Project summary
Findings:
Twitter data
Twitter data was obtained freely through a partnership between UCSB Library and Crimson Hexagon. Before downloading, the data was queried to meet the following conditions:
Crimson Hexagon only allows 10,000 randomly selected tweets to be exported, manually, at a time in .xls format. Due to this restriction, data was manually downloaded for every 2 days in order to capture all tweets. There were around 5000 average number of daily tweets that met these conditions.
The Crimson Hexagon data did not contain all desired information, including whether or not the tweet was geotagged. To get this information we used the python twarc library to “rehydrate” the data using individual tweet ids and store the tweet information as .json files. From here we were able to remove all tweets that did not have a geotag, giving us a total of 82,876 tweets.
Here is a sample of the type of the final twitter information we obtained.
| created_at | tweet_id | full_text | user_id | user_location | geo_type | geo_coordinates | language | retweet_count | favorite_count | lat | lon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu Mar 05 03:44:07 +0000 2015 | 5.733281e+17 | All I want in life is good food, nice clothes and someone to enjoy my presence. | 35117228 | california | Point | c(34.4119796, -119.85454855) | en | 2 | 0 | 34.41198 | -119.8545 |
| Fri Apr 03 19:46:51 +0000 2015 | 5.840796e+17 | I still can’t believe we gave up Foles and 12 million in cap space and now some cripple named Samuel is our franchise QB | 263870894 | 609 | Point | c(34.41449499, -119.70649011) | en | 0 | 5 | 34.41450 | -119.7065 |
| Fri Aug 07 00:02:19 +0000 2015 | 6.294424e+17 | Lauren Pappas @laurenfitdj in Santa Barbara for Drop Dead Fit Magazine. #fitnessathlete #fitfam… https://t.co/qA5CGg0EGJ | 2302521265 | Santa Barbara, CA | Point | c(34.45159439, -119.75368444) | en | 0 | 2 | 34.45159 | -119.7537 |
| Wed Apr 19 16:53:01 +0000 2017 | 8.547396e+17 | What is the meaning of love? #iloveyou #soontobebigbrother #santabarbara #california #aupairlife… https://t.co/HuMceXXWEE | 295662875 | La Chorrera, Panamá | Point | c(34.40224316, -119.72276721) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.40224 | -119.7228 |
| Sun Aug 16 04:05:53 +0000 2015 | 6.327652e+17 | Awesome great time at #lindseystirling ! @ Santa Barbara Bowl https://t.co/S6KvlmnxJl | 562928851 | Santa Barbara, CA | Point | c(34.43474072, -119.69384422) | en | 0 | 1 | 34.43474 | -119.6938 |
| Sun Oct 30 21:22:14 +0000 2016 | 7.928391e+17 | The groom’s family #theflorescabride #wearingfloresca #customfloresca @ Santa Barbara County… https://t.co/boDfNbpiRy | 52962788 | Los Angeles, CA | Point | c(34.42435, -119.702461) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.42435 | -119.7025 |
| Wed Jan 21 18:19:10 +0000 2015 | 5.579656e+17 | Kunin Wines Tasting Room @kuninwines. http://t.co/vYWoimTEIt #Santa_Barbara ðð thanks for being my http://t.co/Wvst0qF2wg | 421095102 | New York, USA | Point | c(34.41399614, -119.68882483) | en | 0 | 1 | 34.41400 | -119.6888 |
| Tue Jan 24 15:08:46 +0000 2017 | 8.239104e+17 | current weather in Santa Barbara: light rain, 49°F 100% humidity, wind 4mph, pressure 1022mb | 120332550 | Santa Barbara, CA | Point | c(34.42, -119.7) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.42000 | -119.7000 |
| Wed Dec 28 19:01:59 +0000 2016 | 8.141846e+17 | Last night wanderings brought me to this magical little corner of downtown 😊 #happiness @ Santa… https://t.co/s90uExRCsl | 74403296 | LO/GR, MI—NL—CA—ATX = LOVE | Point | c(34.4258, -119.714) | en | 0 | 0 | 34.42580 | -119.7140 |
| Sat Mar 12 02:09:17 +0000 2016 | 7.084749e+17 | Arrived in #santabarbara a couple of hours ago. It’s much colder here and it’s been raining here… https://t.co/gZ5Pj6q43f | 316532088 | Spain | Point | c(34.4381218, -119.7254181) | en | 0 | 1 | 34.43812 | -119.7254 |
The spatial distribution of tweets highlights areas of higher population density and tourist areas in downtown Santa Barbara. There is a single coordinate that has over 11,000 tweets reported across all years. It is near De La Vina between Islay and Valerio. There is nothing remarkable about this site so I assume it is the default coordinate when people tag “Santa Barbara” generally. The coordinate is 34.4258, -119.714.
As you zoom in on the map, clusters will disaggregate. You can click on blue points to see the tweet.